Elie Barnavi

Miriam Eliav-Feldon

The history of the Jews spans more than two millenia and encompasses most parts of the globe--an extraordinary saga which is set forth pictorially in this comprehensive, and richly illustrated and designed volume. With hundreds of brilliantly detailed maps, photographs, and drawings, and chronologies and commentaries by leading experts,A Historical Atlas of the Jewish Peopleis both an authoritative reference work and a sumptuous gift volume.

From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present

A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People

Early Modern Europe was teeming with impostors. Identity theft (as in the case of Martin Guerre) was only one form of misrepresentation: royal pretenders, envoys from imaginary lands, religious dissimulators, cross-dressers, false Gypsies - all these were causing deep anxiety, which led authorities to invent increasingly sophisticated means for unmasking deception. From theories about racial characteristics, through branding or distinctive garments, down to permits and passports - such were the weapons in the struggle to attain reliable verification of every person's identity.

Renaissance Impostors and Proofs of Identity

Benjamin Isaac

Joseph Ziegler

Is it possible to speak of western racism before the eighteenth century? The term 'racism' is normally only associated with theories, which first appeared in the eighteenth century, about inherent biological differences that made one group superior to another. Here, however, leading historians argue that racism can be traced back to the attitudes of the ancient Greeks to their Persian enemies and that it was adopted, adjusted and re-formulated by Europeans right through until the dawn of the Enlightenment. From Greek teachings on environmental determinism and heredity, through medieval concepts of physiognomy, down to the crystallization of attitudes to Indians, Blacks, Jews and Gypsies in the early modern era, they analyse the various routes by which racist ideas travelled before maturing into murderous ideologies in the modern western world. In so doing this book offers a major reassessment of the place of racism in pre-modern European thought.

The Origins of Racism in the West

Tamar Herzig

In this book, twelve scholars of early modern history analyse various categories and cases of deception and false identity in the age of geographical discoveries and of forced conversions: from two-faced conversos to serial converts, from demoniacs to stigmatics, and from self-appointed ambassadors to lying cosmographer.

Miriam Eliav-Feldon

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